The 'How Did Your Airsoft Day Go? Thread

[Tackle]

5 minutes ago, Colin Allen said:

I really like sites that require barrel socks; it is a level of protection against the retards, as long as it is actually implemented.

If only more people used "barrel socks" irl, we might not have quite so many retards on sites😏

[Mtemprell]

I can definitely understand the added safety element to barrel socks. I think I'm just thinking too much into my GBBR mind set of I have no mag in my gun so it can't fire a round and forget about the retards with aegs who don't observe the no dry fire rule. So definitely appreciate the added safety they offer. 

[TheFull9]

Said it in here a couple of times; had the most utterly 'ok' games at driver wood. Field is probably above average (though not all of it), SZ is top tier to be fair. But the games were fairly poorly planned, kinda mundane, not well balanced and lazily just flipped around with no real variety. I also had the most patronising safety brief of my time in airsoft at the site, granted that's something which does really get my goat in general, but I think if I'd recorded it a lot of folks would agree.

 

Barrel socks is a decent idea in general and being the sort of site that's always busy with paintball and laser tag kids' birthdays it makes even more sense. But the food rule is fucking bullshit in the first degree for a myriad of reasons already well stated by others here, and just generally BS outside any dietary requirements etc. I took my own stuff and ate it and I'd just claim some nebulous allergy if questioned; if further details were demanded they're then maybe sort of crossing in to the realms of asking a persons' private medical information. Ridiculous scenario overall and it should never come to that (not having the stupid rule would negate that).

 

They also seemed to have a rule last time I was there (was badly explained so I'm not 100%) that there was a 5-10m MED for 1.1J auto capable weapons, which at the time I went wasn't stated on their site so I didn't bring a sidearm (no MED) and that just makes for silly scenarios in game where you can't put a single shot in someone if you suddenly round a corner on an opposing player, even though said sidearm would be the same muzzle energy.

[Impulse]

The... very business focused rules at Driver Wood is the worst aspect of the site I will agree, but... I somewhat ignore that side of it. I'm not going hungry just because I don't want to buy their food, and my kit tends to include a backpack as I like to try and go as close to real-steel as I can, and field sustainment is a thing. That backpack will have food in it...

 

Though I will say I don't mind the barrel sock thing. Yeah, I only use gas guns, so if the mag is out, my gun's only going to make a clicking noise when I pull the trigger while it's primed and it's annoying to have to use a barrel sock that does nothing for me, but I have seen more than enough AEG and HPA safe zone dry firing to not mind the extra bit of safety.

 

And I think the MED on 1.1J guns is just poorly communicated, as when we went there we asked the marshalls if single shot was fine and they said yes, but we asked because in the safety brief it really sounded like rifles had a 5-10m MED for no reason.

 

Personally, I enjoy every game I've been to Driver Wood. Granted, it's not regularly because I don't know anyone near me who drives there and could give me a lift, but with my own driving test around the corner I imagine I'll be going regularly once I've passed and have my own car, as I do really enjoy the site itself, and regardless of the game design I can usually make a good site a fun day of airsofting for myself.

Edited Wednesday at 19:52 by Impulse

[Emergencychimps]

Having been shot in the safe zone during a safety brief and witnessing several nd's in safe zone, I don't take my glasses off until I am leaving the site. Barrel socks sound great to me. 

 

Sod having a sites food forced on me though 

[Lyndication]

Safety briefs really are an exercise in endurance. 

 

Also are people still using Facebook? It's funny still being pointed to it because it feels like it barely works these days.

[Mtemprell]

1 minute ago, Lyndication said:

Also are people still using Facebook?

I deleted my Facebook account 2 years ago and never looked back and don't miss the thing. Was once a good tool and still is if used right but that's the thing so many don't use it right. 

 

I think we are wandering a bit off topic now for this thread. 

[Impulse]

Speaking of Driver Wood, me and my friend might be making a trip down there on Sunday and it's been a while. Guessing I shouldn't leave stuff lying around the safe zone? We won't have access to a car to store things through the day, so I think I'm going to just need to carry everything with me.

 

And do they chrono regular GBB pistols?

[The_Lord_Poncho]

1 hour ago, Impulse said:

Speaking of Driver Wood, me and my friend might be making a trip down there on Sunday and it's been a while. Guessing I shouldn't leave stuff lying around the safe zone? We won't have access to a car to store things through the day, so I think I'm going to just need to carry everything with me.

 

And do they chrono regular GBB pistols?

Whilst i stick my spare Rifs in the car, i leave everything else in the safezone, and never had an issue. There are small lockers that are free I believe (but ive never used them). From memory, they ask to chrono Mk23s only. 

 

 

[Impulse]

2 hours ago, The_Lord_Poncho said:

Whilst i stick my spare Rifs in the car, i leave everything else in the safezone, and never had an issue. There are small lockers that are free I believe (but ive never used them). From memory, they ask to chrono Mk23s only. 

 

 

 

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm not too worried about someone nicking like... a scrim net, but I'm definitely not leaving my SRS (my usual backup because small, light and easy to pack) lying around the safe zone, let alone any of my rare guns. Hopefully the m24 and HK45 will work flawlessly, because I'm not bringing spare guns 😅

[WildBoneZ]

Great evening shoot at Trigger Happy Airsoft in Belfast.

 

First time playing there and gameplay was fast and frantic at time, proper CQB vibes. Bit disappointed I couldn't chuck my BFGs but understand as its nearby streets and out of respect to the neighbours.

 

Noticed a few safety concerns and reported them directly to the marshals and they where appreciated and supportive of constructive feedback.

 

I hadn't filled my air tank for Mp7 HPA rig and it ran out middle of a fire fight, dead trigger 🙃 

 

Back to the safezone and grabbed by back up DE M923G which I forgot how decent out of the box.

 

Spoilt with CQB sites at the moment and I know my next outdoor skirmish im going to do some whinging 😆😆😆

 

[Holly Wallace]

Just got back from Strikeforce CQB in Gloucester, It was veeeery quiet today. Just me, A couple other guys, One of their kids and a couple of the staff.

The two regulars/staff were pitted against the other 4 of us, Started off with a centre flag/KOTH game, rotated around, After a break, The usual pushback game with one team defending and retreating back a zone when hit, Rotated that too.

 

It's super dark in there during the autumn and winter, That combined with the small teams made it really slow. Mostly devolved into holding corners, Both parties waiting for someone to turn on a flashlight. Everyone played great, The team of 4 I was in got a little bit stomped lol. I was being a bit cowardly jumping at shadows, And we ending up moving at a snails' pace for the majority of the game. 

After quite a bit of (unsuccessful) shouting of encouragement, Marshall grabbed a gun and we think he was trying to give us a hand. Ran up and blasted everyone, Our team included lol. Really don't think he likes slow matches

 

Halfway through I had my earpro shot off, BB hit and shattered the plastic linkage between the headband wire and the actual ear cover :((( (fixed with healthy dose of electrical tape)

 

After both gamemodes, Other 3 of my team threw in the towel, Very fair, Pitch black CQB isn't everyones cup of tea....  Me and a regular decided to do a little 1v1, Which was the most fun I've had at strikeforce yet.

 

My new Vorsk VMP-1 performed brilliant, Absolutely worth the money. Just has an issue where it likes to stick on full auto when the magazine's low on pressure or something

 

Overall worth the 25 quid, People who showed up were great fun, Even if it was a little slow. I'd still say the sweet spot for strikeforce CQB is 16-25 players.

 

[Mtemprell]

1 hour ago, Holly Wallace said:

Just has an issue where it likes to stick on full auto when the magazine's low on pressure or something

 

That's a gbb trait. It's because the slide or bolt doesn't have enough ump to do a full stroke to disengage the trigger so you get a burst of full auto. Worth using higher powered gas in cooler months and top up gas on every BB refill. Should minimise that fault. 

[Lyndication]

Yeah, you can also look at winter springs if it's getting cold where you're playing 

[Colin Allen]

Putting aside my ambivalence towards the site, I set out this morning for Splatoon in Essex, having made sure that my rifles were wearing their barrel socks.

The site was remarkably busy, with 120 players being present, representing a wide range of ages and experience, including a fair number of rentals.  Because of this, four of us ended up sharing one picnic table; I was delighted to encounter Luke, a former Airsoft Plantation and Tower Airsoft marshal who I have known for a while and who had once offered me a marshalling gig on behalf of Tower's management.

After going through the morning rituals, which included setting up the MP5SD2 and listening to the safety briefing and the somewhat vague briefing for the first game, we set off to the field for a game of spinners.  Each of the three zones has a spinner with two colours; each team has to try to finish the game with their colour upwards in each zone.  I started off in the centre zone, where we had a great fight, eventually managing to get what we thought was our colour up and defending it.  After a while, I was hit, so went back to regen, where I bumped into Luke.  We decided to go into the container field with a group of other regened players; unfortunately, at this point, it became clear that there was some confusion over which colour we were supposed to get pointing up.  One marshal said that we had to get one colour up while another stated the opposite.  Regardless, we had a great time exchanging shots and kills with the enemy until the game ended.  It turned out that we had somehow managed to get all the spinners pointing up the way we needed them.  Talking to some opposing players in the safe zone, it became apparent that they had also suffered from the same confusion and conflicting instructions, so I it may have been mere chance that resulted in us winning.

After a mercifully short break to reload, we went out for a fallback game after another rather vague briefing which somewhat glossed over how many stages there were.  As the attackers, we had infinite regens at our start point, while the defenders turned out to have one life in each of three areas.  Attacking against 60 players in a very small area, our initial advance was slow and I made an awful lot of trips back to regen before we started making ground; after a long slog, we forced them out of the first area and regrouped before advancing into the first stage of the container field, where I got some excellent hits on defenders in the structures.  Having eventually cleared that section, including some pesky snipers in the top woods who took ages to get rid of, we started our attack into the second part of the container field, but ran out of time before getting to the final objective.  

Having partaken of luncheon, during which some players left, another game rather inevitably ensued.  Four large containers of water were scattered across the site; each team had to try to get them back to their regen.  Firefights ensued all across the site as both sides searched for them and tried to get them back, during which a small group of us had a rather amusing private war with some opposing players in the lower zone which had nothing to do with recovering the containers.  The game ended as a draw.

After another break, during which more a lot more players left, mostly from our team, we played a reverse of the earlier fallback game; suffice to say that it went rather more quickly than the earlier iteration, with the remnants of our team being utterly steamrollered.  I was hit almost immediately in the first section and fell back into the far corner of the first half of the container field; Luke and I decided to hide ourselves in the top woods in the hope that the enemy would declare the area clear without spotting us, thus incurring time penalties.  This did not work.  In the last stage, I had the pleasure of taking out several enemy players who were trying to move through the top woods and one impertinent chap who poked his head around a corner rather too often.

Following this, I, along with many others, decided to leave, having had another less than excellent day at Splatoon.  Luke's comment was that it seemed to be a decent site but the team did not seem to know how to use it effectively; I could not disagree.  He will probably not return.

Weapons used
CYMA MP5SD2
Ares L1A1
Real Sword QBZ-97
ASG XP18 Commander (CO2)




 

[Impulse]

I just got home from... a different site for once. Me and my friend headed to Driver Wood, as we haven't played in over a month and he really wanted to see what the site was like. It was only my 2nd time there, and the last time I went was a while ago so it was basically both of our first times since so much has changed. I made the best decision of the day and when I saw it was 5 celcius this morning, I popped the thermals on. Since we wouldn't be able to leave anything locked in a car, we both only took 1 rifle and 1 pistol each; I chose my pre-ban Tanaka m24 and my TM HK45, though part of me did wish I brought my SRS or MTW-308 instead, as it was very, very cold this morning and it took a bit of doing to get my m24 shooting where I wanted. I stuck with orange gas in the m24 to try and ensure it was still consistent through the cold temperatures, but green gas went in the HK45 as that was cycling okay on green. If it was going to be 5 celcius all day, I'd have gone with red gas in the m24 and orange in the HK45.

 

There were over 120 people on site today and it didn't feel like it. The site never felt over-crowded, and people weren't bunching up behind barricades. I can't give a detailed breakdown of each game, as I didn't pay any attention to the objectives. They would say where the objectives were, but me as a new player to the site had no idea where most of those places were. The only one I remember was the card game, where they hid a bunch of giant playing cards around the site and I remember that because some of the players moaned it was boring and I think they basically always play that game; I didn't mind it though. I spent most of the day trying to learn the site, learning the landmarks, learning some nice angles etc, and I would say I had a very successful day. I spent a lot of the day fighting around Oxford Street, finding a nasty little angle onto a helicopter that the other team consistently used and using my scrim net to essentially be invisible in one of the shipping containers as I shot out of the window. At one point, I had 4 people looking right at me while I was trying to reload and they didn't see me thanks to the dark interior, no silhouetting as there was a wall behind me, and the scrim net draped over me and my rifle to break up my silhouette and be less head-and-shoulders-shaped.

 

Best part of the day for me was the 105m shot. For those who have played at Driver Wood, it was from the double decker bus on Oxford street all the way to the tower on the corner down the road. I had used my rangefinder in the previous game from that tower to see how far the bus was and it was just over 100m, and in this game after we had switched sides, I was sitting a few metres back in the bus to make sure that I wasn't visible to anyone close below, and also so that the other snipers in the tower couldn't drop shots onto me as I had a roof over my head. My celebration was short lived as my friend got taken out when someone sprayed full auto into the bus and I had to bug out, but still... 105m shot is always a nice one to hit. It was true airsoft archery though, as I had to aim at a significant angle and try and walk it in. Probably took about 10 shots to finally get the hit. There were a lot of long range shots today, with a lot of shots being 70m+, but the 105m shot was the stand out moment.

 

So, my overall opinions of the site were very positive, but nothing's perfect and Driver Wood definitely has its issues. Hit taking was fine, though there were a few people taking the piss; however I saw the marshalls hit-checking players all day which was really great to see. The games weren't inspired, but they worked and did the job for a skirmish day. The site itself plays well, with no one way of playing feeling overpowered; there are plenty of long sight lines for a good sniper to take advantage of (which I enjoyed every moment of because Worthing is crap for sniping), but I never felt too dominant or untouchable and aggressive plays were often well-rewarded from what I saw (because I certainly wasn't doing it with my bolt action sniper rifle and 10rd mags!). The marshalling seemed decent from what I could see, and I didn't really have any issues there. Where I did have issues was after lunch there was a bit of spawn-camping (and I even overheard a player in the safe zone bragging about doing it...). In one game, we ended up just turning our roaming spawn (a spawn that can be attacked) into our hard respawn because the enemy team was all around our hard respawn and it was impossible to spawn there. Also, the team balance was abysmal. It feels like a lot of the regulars all stick together on one side (and I heard someone behind me in the safety brief saying that too), and our team lost literally every game through the day, though I don't mind that too much; I actually quite enjoy being on the weaker team and seeing how much damage I can do. The only thing for me was the spawn-camping; I hate spawn-campers. Oh, and the fact we go back to the safe zone after every game. That got really annoying too, but not the end of the world.

 

Also, my LBE + backpack setup worked wonders. Carried everything I needed and really didn't feel heavy at all. Had it on for the whole day, fully loaded, and really didn't feel it because the weight was distributed so well. I might swap the right-side pistol mag pouch for a holster though and just run a pistol without a suppressor or flashlight. At that height, it'd be far too unwieldy with a suppressor, and my Warrior Assault Systems holster doesn't accept a flashlight, but I really didn't need the 4 spare pistol mags as I barely used my pistol. 2 spare mags would've been more than enough.

[Austeyr]

17 minutes ago, Colin Allen said:

decent site but the team did not seem to know how to use it effectively

Hit the nail on the head there, unfortunately… Majority of the games are overly convoluted in the briefing whilst in essence the actual gameplay is simple.
Briefings take a long time too which loses people’s attention rapidly and then it leads to the inevitable “What are we doing?” 
 

As I mentioned in our DM, more often than not lately we’ve been going more just to see friends than actually for the Airsoft which isn’t ideal. It used to be a cracking site when the old marshal was running it (who’s name escapes me now) as it was a quick brief of what to do, gear up and out to play within 5 minutes. Now briefs take 10+ minutes (Literally… I timed it once out of boredom 😂) and another half an hour before you’re on the field, which then usually incurs another 10 minutes before game on is called 😅

[Punisher3990]

Just got home from Ambush Activities in Southampton. 

 

Having previously been mainly to CQB sites, the open woodland was an interesting experience. My workmates were meant to come, but they all bailed, so I was there on my own. First time being a lone wolf, but it was fun to just support my team by myself

 

After just buying and upgrading a Cybergun P90, it was a good challenge and was very fun to be able to sneak around and even flank some enemies. 

 

It was a bit wet and muddy today after a day of rain beforehand, but that just meant they weren't expecting people to be prone on the floor >:)

 

Decent objectives that were actually achievable. A few places I have been before (Ironsight Airsoft) have crazy objectives that are near impossible. So it was nice for the objective to be possible. A few of them even required 2-4 teammates to carry an objective into an enemy base.

 

Other random info from the day: I lost a pistol mag 😢, there was a dude who had a camera RIF (yes, an adapted old style camera with a "press" outfit), I found and handed in someone's car keys I found in some mud by a tree. I got shot in the face by a HPA M249 by a teammate within 10m (ouch)

 

All in all, a good Sunday skirmish. Will likely return to test out my Specna Arms LVOA

Edited 2 hours ago by Punisher3990

[Colin Allen]

37 minutes ago, Austeyr said:

Hit the nail on the head there, unfortunately… Majority of the games are overly convoluted in the briefing whilst in essence the actual gameplay is simple.
Briefings take a long time too which loses people’s attention rapidly and then it leads to the inevitable “What are we doing?” 
 

As I mentioned in our DM, more often than not lately we’ve been going more just to see friends than actually for the Airsoft which isn’t ideal. It used to be a cracking site when the old marshal was running it (who’s name escapes me now) as it was a quick brief of what to do, gear up and out to play within 5 minutes. Now briefs take 10+ minutes (Literally… I timed it once out of boredom 😂) and another half an hour before you’re on the field, which then usually incurs another 10 minutes before game on is called 😅

It was almost the exact opposite today.  The chap doing the briefings, who I had not seen before, reduced the briefings to such an extent that key parts of the briefing were left out or passed over without clarification.  For example, the briefing for the fallback game took less than a minute, during which he showed where the two teams would start, which was ok, and then showed that the next stage would be in the container field with a wave of his hand and a few mumbled words that did not specify whether that would be one stage or two; given that there were a fair number of players who were new to the site, this led to some confusion when the fighting moved there.

[EvilMonkee]

First session at Blackstone, impressive site, superb layout and facilities.  A few stupid players though, lots of team killing (which I didnt mind as their rule is if you TK then you are dead not the person you shot, which I like).  Too many HPA users for my tastes, and whilst they do chrono and tournament lock the guns, at the range of engagements being so short there were a number of nasty bleeders, including one I caught in the ear and my mate took on in the cheek despite wearing full face.  HPA just  retains its energy too well for such short range.  

 

Biggest issue I had all day was some twat thinking that a 'Knife Kill' was waiting around a corner at the bottom of the spiral stairs then shoving me in the chest as I came round the corner.  He did it twice, he was told in no uncertain terms there would not be a third and I reported it to the Marshall team.  Got loads of kills just by keeping moving through bottlenecks and getting behind the enemy. MP9 ran brilliantly.  Will deffo go back maybe on a week day when its not as busy,